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UNO, South High Students and Latino Senior Center Share Results of Collaborative Project

Omaha - University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) students taking a course on Latino migration and integration this semester, along with their service-learning partners from the Intercultural Senior Center in Omaha, will lead a presentation on "Aging Latinos: Growing Population, Growing Importance." South High students who also partnered with UNO on the larger service-learning project will show a video about the difficulties immigrants and refugees face when attempting to fit into this society.

The presentation is from 4 to 6 p.m. on Thursday, May 5, at the center, 2021 U St.

The event is free and open to the public.

The afternoon forum is the culmination of a semester-long service-learning project sponsored by UNO’s Service-Learning Academy.

During the spring semester, UNO students conducted research on a fairly unknown issue, the aging of the Latino immigrant population and who will attend to their needs. The students interivewed clients at the Intercultural Senior Center and created an informational fact sheet about the Latino elderly population, as well as a promotional brochure about the center.

The main purpose of their project was to learn more and inform the community about the growing elderly population and their challenges.

“If centers like this one don’t grow or get support, then we are not going to be prepared to serve the aging community," said Carolina Padilla, exeuctive director of the Intercultural Senior Center.

UNO students will share the Spanish-language brochure and a bilingual PowerPoint presentation, with the general public starting with Thursday’s presentation. The fact sheet is posted on the OLLAS website and the Intercultural Senior Center will help distribute them to the community.

The project has allowed students opportunities to learn how one becomes a more informed and engaged citizen, lessons they will pass along to others through thoughtful reflections during the forum.

Simultaneous interpretation (English to Spanish) will be available on Thursday, and light refreshments will be offered.

For more information, contact Alejandra Toledo at UNO’s Office of Latino/Latin American Studies (OLLAS), 402-554-3835; or Lucy Garza-Westbrook at UNO’s Service-Learning Academy, 402-554-3055.

For information about the Intercultural Senior Center, contact Carolina Padilla, executive director: 402-444-6529. For more information about the Omaha South High student project, call Matthew Curtis: 402-557-3657.

Partial funding for the project was secured through the Service-Learning Academy, the Mammel Foundation and an anonymous donor.

The University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) is Nebraska’s metropolitan university. The core values of the institution place students at the center of all that the university does; call for the campus to strive for academic excellence; and promote community engagement that transforms and improves urban, regional, national and global life. UNO, inaugurated in 1968, emerged from the Municipal University of Omaha, established in 1931, which grew out of the University of Omaha founded in 1908.